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I love to learn and I keep finding great forms of spiritual practice. However, as the day is not long enough, I need to make some choices. So how do we choose the elements that will most enhance our daily spiritual practice?

Active practice

To meditate and do shamanic journeying or to simply practice radiating light, I have to sit in silence. I need to be present, I cannot be doing anything else. It can be only a moment of taking a deep breath and focusing my thoughts toward increasing my inner radiance. Or it can be twenty minutes spent journeying, or meditation, or moving my body in a mindful way.

I need to make daily choices that create an environment that allows me to deepen my spiritual awareness by being present and aware.

Choose the right ceremony

Part of what I’m doing is exploring and learning and making up my own version and combinations of mindful practices that deepen my spiritual connection. The next step is to make some choices. There’s a radiating light practice I’ve added to my daily spiritual practice. I also love to do a shamanic journey every day. They will both stay in my life. That means I either get up earlier or go to bed later, alternate or let some things go. You can’t do everything; choose the action that offers you the most profound change.

Learn to “be”

Becoming more mindful is a constant focus of my spiritual practice. I may need to set my timer so that when it goes off, I stop and center myself with a deep breath and look out my window and let go of my body suit focus and take a moment to bask in my inner world.

What about “tune in” time?

If you don’t contemplate your life, your changes, your new discoveries, if you don’t figure out how you want to adapt them to your life, nothing happens. You must take time for contemplation, for being more self-aware, for feeling what’s aligned and consciously releasing what’s not. That takes some quiet “me” time.

I happen to use writing to figure things out. What’s the meaning of an idea? How will I use it? The result of this inner exploration is posts like this. My introspection makes me productive as well as contemplative.

Sometimes I draw what I’m trying to figure out, using stick figures and arrows and big print and lines that link.

It’s a good idea to regularly take time to simply contemplate what you’ve come across lately, figure out some ways you might incorporate it into your life and see what you want to explore further.

In that same period of self-examination, decide what you can let go.

Inner Work, Self-Awareness, Choice, Release

Do the inner work that shows you your options. Go exploring. Try new things. Play with the options that appear.

Use your self-awareness to decide what forms of inner work fit best with your personality and your time. Make choices that fit into your present life. Find a form for deepening your self-awareness so that your outer choices are aligned with your inner work.

Then release the rest. That opens up space for you to explore new ideas.

There’s only one thing I know that everyone can do to help balance the planet – radiate light. And the more effortlessly we learn to do that, the stronger our light becomes.

Shine your light along the path

When we are in illumined service we walk along the path beside others and simply shine our light – to help them see their way, to perhaps shed light on some new options. But they are always on their path and we are on ours.

Whatever you do or say radiates light.

Upping your inner radiance

What about your inner radiance? How is it doing? If you’re angry, that dulls down your radiance. If you’re judgmental or ignore the needs of others, your radiance will dim.

There are things we can each do to effortlessly radiate more light – it begins with our thoughts.

Begin your day with mindful intention

Create some kind of a daily, mindful ceremony in which you agree to be your best self, do your best work, and release all that doesn’t serve you in shining your light.

Once you feel you’re clear of what holds you back and take steps to release that, make conscious choices about how you’ll illuminate your day. It may be the performance of a task. It may be writing to a friend. It may be holding your tongue in a tense situation. When you become conscious, when you’re mindful of the power of your words and actions, you’ll become more selective.

Our light, the light we show the world, is a reflection of our inner consciousness

Hmmm. How are you perceived? How do you perceive others? What are your judgmental thoughts? (Drop those). How do you notice new places to serve? (Keep looking for those).

Your inner consciousness is who you are. You effortlessly radiate your light, but the question is, is your inner light as bright as you think it is – or want it to be?

Awareness + Choice = Change

Awareness. First become aware of how you feel inside. Serene, gentle, glowing, peaceful? Those qualities will effortlessly radiate as your personal glow, your light, your being-ness.

Choice. You constantly have a choice about what you think and feel. Notice what you choose and make those choices enhance and increase how you want to radiate in the world.

Change. Become aware of how brightly or dimly you’re radiating and choose what you’ll do to increase that radiance. The right choices will bring forth a shiny, effortless personal light.

If your life isn’t working out the way you want it to, change your thoughts and daydreams. It’s all on you. Your thoughts create your life experience. You have the power to change that. You have the power to design the life you want!

Look at what’s not working

Sometimes there are very subtle things that keep us from achieving happiness. It may be some self-worth negativity you’re feeding yourself. It could be that you have set your expectations too high, or too low. It may be that your dreams seem not to be aligned with your reality. Big or little, become aware of what’s not working.

Change your expectation

Take a close look at what you expect can happen. I sometimes look at people with a broad business platform and mostly see the repetition it takes to acquire that. I would be bored singing the same song over and over. Or giving the same talk, or teaching the same classes. I don’t even want to write about the same topics over and over. Exploring is at the core of my happiness. So the bottom line is that I don’t want to have a broad platform if what I have to do requires a lot of repetition.

But what if I change my expectation of what it takes to have a broad platform? What if I drop all the “ways I know to get your business known” and just keep putting out my natural enthusiasm and the discoveries I continue to make? I would be happiest doing that.

Change what you believe is possible

See how I have damaged my expectation? I hold a belief I need to release. That belief says I have to repeat the same material over and over in order to become more known. And everything in me is saying, “Keep exploring. Keep exploring!”

What if it’s possible to simply radiate my ideas and discoveries in the forms that are the most enjoyable to me and believe that more and more and more people will find my work and be moved by it?

My measurement stick is flawed. It’s not about numbers. It’s about the results that are created. I have a very high open rate among my readers so I know that lives are being changed by the shift that happens from some of the concepts I explore. I also know that my work (as does yours) has a ripple effect.

One idea received and absorbed and acted upon can move mountains.

What is your more expansive thought?

In my heart, I know that I touch lives. I get to release any thought of measurement by numbers. I now think in terms of the depth of the change that’s made in the people who are drawn to my discoveries and my insights, in my current forms of sharing. And because in my mind I know that those who are drawn to my work are major players in their own sphere of influence, I know that the ripple effect of my explorations goes places I cannot even begin to imagine.

What do you think you are doing?

How can you change what you think your impact is in order to allow it to be resilient, heart-touching, and far-reaching

One heart at a time. One life at a time. One share at a time. Keep shining your light – and trust.

The postcard from my grandson was a surprise. He acknowledged qualities in me that he respected. And I realized our family does not do that. We do not offer words of appreciation for the ways they express themselves that touches so many hearts, those less tangible qualities of soul and values.

And that’s going to change. Beginning with me.

Do you state the obvious?

Of course, I know my daughter is kind and thoughtful but do I ever tell her that? No. I guess I figure she knows that about herself. Do I tell my son he’s a thoughtful, attentive father? Well, yes I do, on Father’s Day, but…you get the picture.

What do you need to tell someone that you see and admire in them?

Make an acknowledgment list

I keep an acknowledgment list for myself. But I never thought to keep an acknowledgment list for those I care about. What would be on it? I’d tell the social services director here how much I appreciate our occasional philosophical talks. I’d tell my shamanic course partner how much I respect her choice to honor her spiritual calling even when she has an established major presence in medicine. I’d thank my healer friend in California for her ongoing support but I’d also acknowledge her for her perception and healing ability.

See how this unfolds? Look at what people bring into your life, then look beyond that to the gifts they share, and acknowledge those.

Overlook the differences

My grandson said, “I know our intellects are interested in projects of different natures, I nonetheless have tremendous respect for your ongoing passion and enthusiasm.” Acknowledge the differences if you need to, but then acknowledge the gifts, the thoughtfulness that person has extended to you.

Practice

I have to change my thinking in order to do this. I have online conversations with healer friends regularly, and I have to learn to end those conversations with not just a “thank you” but with an acknowledgment of the gifts they have and have offered and have shared.

I may acknowledge a choice they made or an insight they had. I may thank them for a heartfelt share or… I have to look and listen closely to see what I can reflect back to them. I want to hold up a mirror of appreciation so they know how valuable they are.

It’s a matter of changing your thinking and deepening your observation and choosing to say the words.